Rock Music was born in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is a combination of Blues, Gospel, Jazz and Country music.

Historically, the first rock success came basically from American singers such as Muddy Watters, Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Buddy Holly. According to the Library of Congress,

“American rock and roll music was imitated by British groups, who then refined it and, in the view of some, improved it.”

Even if Rock Music was born in United States, musicians like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker introduced the Blues in England. Since the birth of rock music, American and British bands reciprocally influenced and grew up together.

The 60’s were the period named the British Invasion with groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. It cannot be denied that The Beatles led to rock music development around the world. Who doesn’t know one Beatles song at least?!

American bands and singers also brought a lot to rock music. For example, Jimi Hendrix, the great guitar hero invented his own rock style: a kind of Rock and Blues mixed. In another case, Eric Clapton, the famous English guitarist developed Blues Music especially in Chicago.

However, we can say rock music success always balances between England and the USA because each country has their own famous bands and singers. Here is the historical global list of famous British and American Rock music bands:

Its got to be America every time in my humble opinion. Great Rock muscians like Bill Haley .Little Richard, Fats Domino to name but a few. In the Fifties we Brits slavishly copied American music trends and subsequently claimed “founders rights”

I agree the Brits did a fair bit of copying there but the gap between Brit and American culture has forever been pretty small when it comes to the sharing of music. The same thing is happening today with modern electronic music like dubstep where many people don´t even know where it came from anyway they just know there was/is a huge scene in both the States and the UK.

I’m Irish. My top 3 favourite rock bands happen to be Armerican (Aerosmith, Guns N Roses and Metallica). In terms of which country’s rock is better its very difficult to say. I’ve studied the UK music scene previously and I came up with this;

I would like to come up with a similar list for the US, though I’d need to do more research as there are some genres I wouldn’t be as familiar with (country rock, jazz). Anyone reading this could perhaps do their own US list. Grunge the UK never got so didn’t add any flavour to that scene.